next »

[Nition]

July 7 2015: Scraps is now available on Steam.

Original post, December 2012:

Scraps is a vehicle combat game where you build your vehicle from parts.

I've always really liked the extensive car customisation in Interstate '76. A while after it came out, I also played a demo of Stratosphere: Conquest Of The Skies (does anyone else remember that?) where you could build your flying fortress from parts, and I started thinking of a game like the melee mode in I76, but with more customisation of the car itself.

Later I got a demo of LEGO Racers where you could build your own car from scratch. Awesome! Except it wasn't, because the parts were all cosmetic and any effect your creation had on the car's stats was dubious at best. I want to be able to build a car that SUCKS. A car that falls over whenever it corners or only has enough power to fire its guns once a minute. I want each component you place to actually have a function, and have a physical effect. Not to the point of adding needless complexity to the game, like having to wire everything together; just obvious things, like your vehicle being lop-sided if you put all your guns on one side.

All those games came out last century. I've been waiting so long for someone to make a game like this that I gave up and I'm making it myself. I'm excited about this project because I finally get to play it.

Here are some really early screenshots of Scraps (placeholder/buggy/missing stuff everywhere):

Build screen                                   In-Game

TL;DR: It's like Kerbal Space Program except the spaceships are vehicles and they fight.

New Stuff:

Screenshots:








Video:




Early Access launch trailer.

Download:

You can now try the Builder Demo which lets you build vehicles and test them out.

Get It Here

[poe]

This is right up my alley. You should take a look at Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts for some inspiration for crazy parts!

[Slushy_]

Oh man  I'm looking forward to this and I agree about checking out Nuts and Bolts if you haven't already.

[Nition]

I only heard of Nuts & Bolts when I was researching for this, trying to see if there was anything else like it (there isn't really, that I could find). I don't have an XBox but I've watched a few videos. Their construction system looks very clever, although a little different to what I'm doing.

This is my current plan for part categories:
- Cockpit
- Armour
- Blocks (extenders/streamlining/ballast)
- Chassis
- Cooling (passive, active)
- Movement (engines, thrusters, brakes)
- Power (generators, capacitors)
- Weapons (fixed & turret, projectile & ray, rocket normal & homing)
- Misc? (HUD improvements, radar jammer, scope)

[voidSkipper]

Nuts and bolts was an exercise in management and marketing failure. There was a glitch that caused the game to crash in mulitplayer games, reproduceable when parts broke off of vehicles. The solution the support team came up with? Remove part-breaking in multiplayer. That of course meant that some components used for jettisoning things didn't work. Solution? Ban any vehicles using those from multiplayer.

I'd love to see someone do a better job of a similar concept, so godspeed.

[Nition]

[Nition]

Just looking at the IndieDB Top 100 Indies list for this year. There isn't even a category for vehicle games, or racing games. They have "Tactical Shooter" I guess. Clearly to get your fill of sweet vehicle combat, you will need to play Scraps.

[poe]

I believe they made the categories after getting the nominees. Otherwise one entry in some of the categories would be VERY silly.

[Nition]

Oh, yeah, I know. I didn't say it very well but what I meant was, no-one else is making vehicle-based games.

[SolarLune]

Yo! Cool vehicle customization ideas - I like that shooting powerful cannons forces your car to overturn, heh. Seems cool. Nice work! I also like the simple style of the car (simple colors, no textures), though that's probably placeholder.

[Pishtaco]

It's malleable, my design
Things just bolt on here and there
Real clean scraped face
A new gasket fitted and...
Tightened and...
I'm done.

[Nition]

Yo! Cool vehicle customization ideas - I like that shooting powerful cannons forces your car to overturn, heh. Seems cool. Nice work! I also like the simple style of the car (simple colors, no textures), though that's probably placeholder.

The simple non-textured look might remain, the models will just get more detailed.

It's malleable, my design
Things just bolt on here and there
Real clean scraped face
A new gasket fitted and...
Tightened and...
I'm done.

Is that you, Taurus? :D

[Nition]

Not an exciting update by any means, but in the interests of showing that I'm doing something; I made this logo:

I have some minor problems with it but I don't have the designer's eye to make it better. Is it obvious, at least, that the parts are meant to be in the process of slotting into place?

[starsrift]

Cargo! The Quest for Gravity could also be worth a look-see for similar titles. It's a bit glitchy and the physics are... interesting.

[Nition]

I haven't seen that before. It looks... interesting. I'm confused why there seems to be gravity if your quest is to restore gravity?

[wccrawford]

I haven't seen that before. It looks... interesting. I'm confused why there seems to be gravity if your quest is to restore gravity?

That whole game makes no sense.  Don't try to make it.

It was, however, fun.

Scraps sounds like it's going to be great.  Keep up the good work!

[exidl]

Oh Lego Racers, I loved that game so much, and the screenshots reminded me about it.

Keep up the nice work, I'm looking forward onto this

[Nition]

Been messing around with a different logo design:


But in the game I've been implementing an input manager and adding controller support. Yeah, Unity has an input manager built in, but it's a bit lame how you can only edit it in the little prelauncher window before starting the game.


It's not perfect - you can't assign axis inputs to buttons or buttons to axes - but it's working pretty well.

[Nition]

Graphics options...



A bit of real DevLog content:

Unity is a good system, but once you start seriously making Unity games, you also run into some limitations. Limitations which are inherent in the system, at a level you can't access.

I find it quite interesting to see how other Unity games solve or work around the limitations.

For instance, Unity has no Dropdown/Combo Box GUI class, so I made one (I needed a more custom solution than what's on the Unify wiki). That's fine - that's not a limitation in what you can do, just in what's already done. Unfortunately Unity provides no way to consume clicks. As in, if you have a dropdown covering a button, you'll click through and activate both. Why is there no way to consume clicks...?

Anyway, you can work around it in various ways. Personally I'm detecting that a dropdown is open and disabling anything that might be underneath it while it's open. But it's a always bit messy.

Next problem is that most, but not all, of the graphics options that you can change with Unity's Quality Settings system are available to change via code. Why can't I set shadow type for instance?

Anyway, sometimes I think to myself, "I'll see what other Unity games did." Almost always, they didn't. But now I know why. Check out the Kerbal Space Program graphics options for instance. They have pretty much the same options as me, because they're the ones you can access in Unity. Then see how no GUI components ever overlap each other?

[Nition]

Which looks better, the textured look or the cel-shaded?



Of course you can also have textured with outline and cel-shaded with no outline, but trust me when I say they look worse than the options presented. One of the points for the latter option is that it's just easier to do reasonably well. Obviously neither of these are final graphics, but the toony one already looks a bit less amateur than the textured one IMO.

And yes, those are still mostly placeholder models - obviously more detail would help the textured version.